


For the Love of the Brotherhood

by augustfai



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M, no booze no boys, there's a sorority too, this is the college experience before everclear was banned, you'll like these fratboys i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustfai/pseuds/augustfai
Summary: College AU. When people ask Jun why he decided to join a fraternity in the first place, his answer is always the same: Shun. Now he's the president-elect of Pi Alpha Phi, and senior year is about to get way out of hand.
Relationships: Matsumoto Jun/Oguri Shun, Matsumoto Jun/Ohno Satoshi/Nishikido Ryo, Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho, Naka Riisa/Ninomiya Kazunari, Oguri Shun/Yamada Yu
Kudos: 4





	For the Love of the Brotherhood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [taykash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/pseuds/taykash) for the inaugural year -- 2012!!! -- of Kitto Slutparty, the multi-pairing Arashi exchange (RIP). Thank you to my beta [aeslis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeslis/pseuds/aeslis), not just for this but for many other pieces in my portfolio! A few notes/explanation of terms: All my knowledge of fraternities and sororities is from my experience at an American public university. "Rush" is the recruitment period for students, usually freshmen and sophomores, to join frats/sororities. Many of the frats have special events just for rush so that people can get to know them better, meet the brother/sisterhood, get a feel for the atmosphere, etc. Pi Alpha Phi is a real fraternity and Alpha Delta Pi (ADPi) is a real sorority, but ZTDPi is fictional. PJ stands for party juice and is usually a bunch of different juices mixed with vodka; if you're at a fancy ('fancy") party they soak fruit in it.

It isn’t the penises drawn on his mirror in shaving cream that concern Jun. It isn’t even the fact that there are a pair of boxers on the floor he knows aren’t his own. And the gaping, wide-open bedroom window doesn’t even make him blink.  
  
“Where,” Jun mumbles, “the _hell_ are my slippers?”  
  
These slippers are the most wonderful things to have ever graced Jun’s delicate feet. (True, he runs track with the junior varsity team, but that’s nothing a personal footbath and European salves won’t help. Also, runners: _hot_.) He’s had them for years and the fluff lining hasn’t matted down, even after long nights of pacing back and forth trying to figure out whether or not drama was still the right major for him. The majestic violet color hadn’t faded, either, and his embroidered initials still stood out in all their glory.  
  
Jun considers them his best and most fabulous friends. And someone had taken them right under his nose.  
  
Pants be damned, Jun swings open the door to his single room and scans the hallway—nothing but a few red cups rolling lazily on their sides, beer still trickling from the rims. A peek over the staircase into the main lobby doesn’t give him any clues, either.  
  
Shun walks by then, wearing a bathrobe that was once white but is now an odd color of green-gray.  
  
“Hey,” he says, voice hoarse. “You might want to check the roof.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
Jun is halfway up the stairs in a second before he stops and turns around. Shun is still standing on the second floor balcony, half-asleep and probably still drunk.  
  
“Also,” Jun yells, loud enough so that Shun wakes up and also so that the entire frat hears, “the penises on my mirror and the underwear on my floor better be gone by the time I come back downstairs.”  
  
He pauses just to hear doors bang open frantically and more pantsless guys scamper into the hallway toward Jun’s room. Sometimes, he thinks, this brotherhood thing isn’t so bad.  
  
\--  
  
When people ask Jun why he decided to join the frat in the first place, his answer is always the same: Shun.  
  
They had met freshman year at a mixer organized by Pi Alpha Phi. Shun was rushing and wanted to look good, but he ended up standing too close to the keg and instead ended up looking good and drunk. From here, the story gets a little fuzzy, and Shun has his own version: he seduced Matsumoto Jun with a crooked fingertip and a red cup of warm beer.  
  
But Jun knows better, even if he doesn’t really remember that night. One, he would never drink warm beer. And two, Jun would never fall for the crooked-finger trick. Not even if he was wasted out of his mind would he ever give in to something as stupid as a finger tilting ninety degrees.  
  
So he doesn’t know how it happened, but he does remember making out with Shun in a corner of that mixer, everything dark and sweaty and questionable, the room a blurry pulsing mess, the music too loud and pounding in his ears. His contacts were sticking to his eyes and his hair probably looked like a dead, wet sheep but at least he was making out with someone who looked halfway decent.  
  
Nothing happened after that, because Jun still didn’t know how to take people back to his room without being awkward or having them turn around and leave right away anyway because his roommate Nino always left his gaming stuff out in a messy pile that nobody could get through without tripping. And Jun really didn’t mind that so much in the daytime because he liked playing Mario Kart in between classes with his roommate, but it sucked otherwise.  
  
But then during the summer Jun and Shun took beginning economics together and learned that the opportunity cost of skipping class was getting to make out on the quad when there was no one around. Shun was a member of the frat by then, full-fledged, all his dues paid and all his ridiculous PA Phi-themed merchandise bought.  
  
By the time sophomore year started, Shun kept ending up in Jun’s bed and Jun kept finding himself at frat events because he finally had a friend with tons of benefits and he didn’t want to let that go.  
  
And then in January, a week before spring rush started, Shun was taking off his jeans in Jun’s bed and Jun was about ready to go down when Shun suddenly sat up.  
  
Jun was not happy. He did not appreciate being stopped in the middle of such an important activity, and he was already pissed that Shun was wearing boat shoes with no socks. “What?”  
  
“Do me a favor,” Shun said.  
  
Jun took a moment to think about what kind of kinky things Shun might ask him to do, and then decided he wouldn’t mind a lot of them, so he shrugged. “Okay.”  
  
“Rush next week,” he’d said, and Jun was about to put all his clothes on and go, but Shun was still talking. “I’m going to be on the frat committee so you’ll be seeing a lot less of me if you don’t join.”  
  
“Well,” Jun said, and thought about it. “Do I get anything else?”  
  
He hadn’t needed any more prodding—he really, _really_ liked Shun—but he might as well try for more incentives.  
  
“Attractive guys,” Shun said quickly. It was like he’d already made the list. “Looks good on your resume. Your own room in a proper house for senior year. Fancy formals where you can wear a suit and you get as much punch as you want—.”  
  
“—Done,” Jun said. Shun knew him too well. “Done.”  
  
Before this, he’d never really thought about Greek life—joining it or otherwise. He’d gone to a few Greek-sponsored mixers and found himself in the beer-stained basement of Sigma Nu one morning with a killer crick in his neck, but that was as far as his experiences went and he just wasn’t interested in wearing pastel everything and buying bowties and that whole hazing business. It wasn’t his scene.  
  
But Jun takes his friends seriously, and Shun asked him to do this just so they could keep seeing each other. How was Jun supposed to say no? Blame it on the haze of the moment and the liquid fire pulsing under his skin, blame it on all that inevitable freshman naiveté—but Jun knows that he did the right thing. Back then, at eighteen, he would have done anything for Shun. He still would.  
  
\--  
  
Three years later, Jun is president-elect of his university’s PA Phi chapter. He has to wait another semester to be properly sworn in as president, but he’s in no hurry. For now he just wants his slippers, and maybe a stable boyfriend.  
  
Things have changed a bit since freshman year. It’s not that he’s fallen in love with Greek life or anything—everyone is still a douche, the party juice no longer has any taste, and the sorority girls aren’t even that cute—but he’s made a lot of friends this way, and he was able to move into the house a year early. He kept his drama major but added an ethnomusicology minor, and if he finds any class difficult, there is always someone in the frat to help him out.  
  
Like when he had to take a required computer science class. His freshman roommate and computer science major Ninomiya had joined sophomore year after Jun convinced him the frat needed a digital archivist and that he could have the entire basement to himself.  
  
“J,” Nino says, poking his head out of the trapdoor that leads to the roof. He has the worst bedhead Jun has ever seen and he’s as pale as a sheet of paper. “Toma told me I would be able to find you on the roof.”  
  
“You look like shit,” Jun says, balancing on the tiles. He can see his slippers perched on the other end of the roof, as if seated there to watch the sunrise. “Where have you been?”  
  
“CompSci exam.” Nino yawns and squints hard against the bright lights of the outdoors. “I’ve been awake for like thirty hours.”  
  
“That’s nothing new.”  
  
“I’ve been _studying_ for thirty hours,” Nino says, and it comes out in a half-hiss, half-growl. “I took a ten-minute nap and dreamt about Fibonacci numbers and initialization files.”  
  
Jun loses his footing for a second and watches a pile of leaves flutter to the ground. “Speak a language I understand.”  
  
“I don’t want to hook up with you, sorry.” Nino snorts loudly as Jun turns around to glare at him, but not before losing his grip again. More leaves scatter. “Also, can you tell me about that guy you took into your room last night?”  
  
There isn’t a thing Jun can tell Nino about the guy from last night because he doesn’t remember a minute of it. He pretends to think as he crawls slowly across the rooftop, trying not to upset anymore debris or even knock his slippers off the edge. “Tell me who put my slippers out here first.”  
  
Nino’s head bobs out of the sunlight for a second. “Christ, it’s hot.”  
  
That isn’t an answer, but Jun has slunk halfway across the roof now. He’s almost there. Just an outstretched hand and a little lunge, and—  
  
“Matsumoto.”  
  
Fuck. _Again_. Startled, Jun’s foot bangs against a loose tile, and the shock sends one of his slippers plummeting to the world below. He scrambles forward and snatches the other one, but not before bruising his ribcage in the process.  
  
Had the voice been Nino’s, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Jun wouldn’t have even turned around. But it belongs to the current president of the frat, and Jun has to keep up appearances, even if he isn’t wearing pants.  
  
“Sakurai-kun,” Jun says as calmly as possible. “Good morning.”  
  
“It is a good morning.” Sho smiles widely. “Listen—I have to practice my thesis defense later. Care to join me? I need an audience, and Nino says he would much rather enjoy gouging his ear tunnels out and listening to Hello Project girlbands all day.”  
  
“The old Morning Musume stuff isn’t so bad,” Jun says, very serious, and then clears his throat. “What’s your thesis on?”  
  
Except Jun doesn’t need to ask: he knows. Everyone in the frat knows. Hell, Jun wouldn’t be surprised if the entire campus knew, including the faculty and staff. Sakurai Sho is the type of guy who doesn’t necessarily broadcast what he’s doing to the rest of the world, and yet the rest of the world still manages to find out. He is just that loved—or wanted.  
  
“It’s an exploration of the sociocultural changes that American rappers have created throughout East Asia,” Sho says, and Jun pretends that makes sense to him. “Do you know anything about it?”  
  
“Tupac,” Jun says right before blushing a furious shade of pink. Sho just smiles, and behind him Nino pretends to vomit all over himself and the roof.  
  
“By the way, nice slipper,” Sho says then, nodding to Jun’s lap. Jun hopes he actually means _nice lack of pants_. “I’ll get the other one for you.”  
  
And he does. Sho is a gentleman at heart, and Jun has always liked nice boys.  
  
\--  
  
Luckily the underwear on Jun’s floor is gone when he gets back to his room, but whoever rinsed the shaving cream dicks off the mirror didn’t do a very good job. For a split second Jun thinks about recruiting the next pledger he sees to wipe the rest of it off, but decides against it. He’s already exhausted and he hasn’t even been awake for an hour. Finding a whiny freshman would just be more work that he doesn’t want to deal with.  
  
As he runs the water over a washcloth, someone knocks on the door. “Need help?”  
  
Jun turns around. “Not from you,” he says, but without much conviction. “What’s up?”  
  
Shun shrugs. He’s still wearing the bathrobe, and Jun really wants to tell him to wash it, but the poor kid looks like he can barely hold himself up. “I came to ask if you knew what the hell I did last night, because I sure don’t know.”  
  
“And I would?” Jun swipes the mirror down the middle in one long stroke. “I don’t even think we were together last night.”  
  
He doesn’t mention how the two of them haven’t gone out together in months. Jun’s not sure when things changed, but he remembers a time when he wasn’t even able to leave his dorm on a Friday night without texting Shun first and asking where he was going. But lately Shun has been going out with the other guys in the frat to parties that Jun just isn’t interested in.  
  
“Yeah,” Shun says, voice distant for a second, but then he reaches forward and grabs the washcloth out of Jun’s hand. “You’re too slow. Move over.”  
  
Jun doesn’t fight. He sits on the edge of the bathtub and watches Shun clear the mirror in two easy movements. “Why are you asking, though? What’d you do?”  
  
“Um.” Shun pretends to focus wiping away a difficult spot that isn’t really there. “I told you, I don’t know, but.”  
  
Jun has known Shun for far too long to put up with this. Also, he can guarantee that whatever the story is, he’s heard worse. This is inevitable in Greek life, especially if the president of the Inter-Fraternity Council is a certain Akanishi Jin. “But what? Don’t tell me you knocked someone up.”  
  
It’s supposed to be a joke. But Shun isn’t laughing.  
  
“Shun,” Jun says.  
  
“That girl with the really nice hair,” Shun says, still focusing on the spot that doesn’t exist. “In ADPi.”  
  
“Kuroki Meisa?” Jun tries not to laugh. “She actually hooked up with you?”  
  
“No,” Shun says, voice low. He looks behind him, but there isn’t anyone else in this house besides Nino who would dare show up in Jun’s room without permission. “I mean—she does have really nice hair. But no, someone else.”  
  
Jun has to think about it. He’s extremely picky about hair, whereas Shun will grow his out to a weird mullet and think it looks good.  
  
But he does have someone in mind.  
  
“Yuu?” Jun guesses. “Yamada Yuu?”  
  
Shun ducks his head. When he looks up, his smile is a little desperate, and mostly pleading.  
  
“Jun,” he says, “do you know how to count periods?”  
  
\--  
  
Jun does not know how to count periods, nor does he ever want to know, and he can make sure of this by never sleeping with a girl. So far, he’s doing a good job of it (though he has to admit that if Kuroki Meisa ever got off her damn high horse and yanked her head out of the clouds, he would probably do her in a heartbeat).  
  
He leaves Shun in the bathroom, promising that he’ll be back in a second with someone they trust who might actually know a thing or two about what happens when condoms break during sex with girls. Just the thought of that—in fact, the thought of a vagina—makes Jun a little sick, but he tries not to show it as he tugs on a pair of jeans and steps into the hallway.  
  
“Ah,” Sho says, stepping a little clumsily out of the way so as not to collide with Jun. “You shouldn’t open your door into the hall, you know.”  
  
Jun’s throat immediately constricts. Sho has put on his glasses and is carrying a thick binder stuffed with papers. He looks exactly like he just stepped out of one of Jun’s biggest fantasies, except he’s wearing clothes. “Sorry,” he says, attempting to sound as normal as possible. “You’re not hurt, right?”  
  
Sho shakes his head. “I’m fine, but next time, watch out.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For me.”  
  
Jun feels like he has been hit by lightning and confusion all at the same time: watch out for Sho? Well, he always has. But wait. What did that mean? Why did he say it? Was he being literal? Of course Jun should watch out for Sho in the hallway when he blindly opens his door; he should watch out for everyone, especially Toma who tends to sleepwalk. But Jun has a feeling Sho isn’t talking about safety.  
  
At least, not hallway safety.  
  
“I will,” Jun says carefully, like he’s practicing for a presentation. “Were you on your way to practice for your thesis defense?”  
  
“I was,” Sho says, and shifts his binder to the front of his pants. “I was on my way here, actually.”  
  
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Jun now has to remember how to successfully get someone from the very tricky outside-his-bedroom-zone into the extremely easy onto-his-bed-area in broad daylight. This is difficult for two reasons: one, he hasn’t done this in a long time because usually his partners just walk into the room on their own, and two, he is so turned on he can’t even think properly. He feels like a big ball of thunder and heat, heat all the way from the tips of his toes to his hairline, and he swears that if it weren’t eleven o’clock in the morning and his brothers weren’t up and about doing non-sexy things at this non-sexy hour he would just tear Sho’s clothes off in the hallway and take him on the slatted wood floor.  
  
But it’s eleven and Jun is sweating and hard and confused, and Shun—shit! Shun is still in the bathroom. God, Jun thinks, I am an awful friend. “Sakurai-kun, um…”  
  
Sho raises his eyebrows. “Do you have plans?”  
  
“No,” Jun says quickly, even though the answer is _yes, I have plans and a friend in my bathroom who needs to know how to count periods._ Thinking about that calms him down a little. “It’s just—.”  
  
The door bangs behind him suddenly, like someone has run into it.  
  
“Sho-kun! Christ. Jun, you’re the best, of course Sho-kun would know.”  
  
Jun has never felt more horrified in his life. “ _Shun_ ,” he starts, but the rest of the sentence gets stuck in his throat.  
  
But Shun isn’t listening. Of course not, Jun thinks, he has bigger things on his mind. But here is Jun, also with big things on his mind (Sho’s binder is one of them, followed by what’s behind it), and he can’t get over the sheer shock that he was just cockblocked by his best friend.  
  
On the other hand, Sho has switched gears without even batting an eyelash. “Oguri,” he says, voice back to its normal volume. “You needed help with something?”  
  
“It could possibly be something,” Shun says, and joins Sho in the hallway, leaving Jun with a crushed spirit and an extremely disappointed boner. “Or not. I hope not, anyway.”  
  
“Seems serious,” Sho says, glancing once at Jun before putting an arm around Shun. “Come to my room and we’ll talk about it.”  
  
Shun looks back at Jun, wide-eyed and almost apologetic. _Did I interrupt something?_  
  
The urge to smack Shun to the floor and beat him with a slipper (a normal one, not one of his nice ones) is fierce, but Jun reminds himself: broken condom. Broken condom. Broken condom, pregnancy scare, Shun needs him.  
  
Jun shrugs. _Nope_ , he mouths back, and watches Sho’s ass disappear behind a corner.  
  
\--  
  
But really though: Shun interrupted everything, and Jun could kill him. He could also kill him for being in the midst of a pregnancy scare and making Jun worry about things like possible babies and what Shun will do if he has to take out another student loan to pay for child support, but mostly he just wants revenge for the most obvious and brutal cockblock known to man. It was as if Shun had appeared behind Jun with a grin and a blinking neon sign that said I AM HERE TO STOP YOU FROM GETTING IT ON in huge letters.  
  
He has always had bad luck, but this is just a kick in the gut. No—the balls. That would be more appropriate.  
  
The way he sees it now, Jun has two choices: he could jerk off in the bathroom like a horny fifteen-year-old (and from the way he’s been acting, maybe he is and _maybe he doesn’t care_ ) or he could find someone to take care of his problem. If he were a rational thinker, Jun would possibly consider starting work on his geology paper or reading the screenplays he has due for next class to distract himself.  
  
But the thought of Sho is persistent, and there is no way he could even sit down for five minutes with his schoolwork without snapping completely. So Jun stalks into his bathroom—  
  
—And hears the door to his room squeak open.  
  
“Shun,” Jun begins, ready to give his best friend the lashing of his life, “I can’t be _lieve_ —.”  
  
“I can’t believe you think I’m Shun,” Sho says, and Jun hasn’t even made it out of the bathroom before he finds himself against the wall, elbows bruising against cheap plaster as Sho presses up against him. “He’s pretty upset, you know.”  
  
OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL OH MY GOD, Jun thinks, but quickly suppresses the urge to tear off all his clothes at once. “I’m pretty upset with him,” he says instead, fighting to keep his voice at a reasonable level. “I buy all his condoms. You’d think he’d want to use one, they’re free.”  
  
“I did see that box,” Sho says, words dropping low to a growl. “I took the liberty of helping myself to a few.”  
  
“Oh?” Jun’s mouth feels like a desert.  
  
“I thought I’d need some in the near future,” Sho says, and kisses Jun, fire and ice all at once, so hard Jun has to grab a fistful of Sho’s shirt to keep from sliding down the wall. He wonders for a split second if the door to his bedroom is open, and then reconsiders it: of course it isn’t open. It’s Sho. It’s Sakurai-sempai, and he is always one step ahead of the game.  
  
Before this, Jun imagined Sho to kiss the way he acts in class—deliberate and intelligent (but not a show-off), someone who would make a mistake just to remind the world that he’s human. But the real Sho kisses like he just can’t get enough, and Jun feels himself bruising in the lips and the elbows. The real Sho kisses like he’s two steps behind the game and needs to catch up before the timer runs out. It hurts, but Jun likes it. He wouldn’t stop this for the world.  
  
“You’re good with this, right?” Sho says, and Jun feels the words rather than hears them. “This is okay?”  
  
Trust Sho to ask. Jun works a knee in between Sho’s legs and pulls him closer. They don’t align properly, and Jun has angles where Sho’s body decided to stretch, but he loves a challenge. “Perfect,” he says, and drags Sho by the shirt to the bathroom counter.  
  
Tomorrow morning, Jun thinks, Sho will wake up and count all his minor injuries from this moment. He will have a horizon-line bruise on his hip where the edge of the counter dug into his skin, and a butterfly-shaped tattoo of purple on his other hip where Jun hung on to him, rocking, so desperate he felt almost silly. Maybe he’ll have welts on his shoulders, still, track marks created by Jun’s nails.  
  
“I’ve never gotten off in a bathroom,” Sho says, and there is laughter in his voice. He’s watching Jun fumble with their belt buckles—suddenly the most complex contraptions in the universe. “Do you do this a lot, Jun?”  
  
“Yes—no,” Jun growls, and looks up to glare at Sho. “Are you going to help me or what?”  
  
“I’d rather watch you struggle,” Sho says, but reaches down anyway and tugs Jun’s belt off easily, then his own. The buttons on jeans go next, two quick finger movements, and the boxers are simple pulls of cotton down cold knees. Within a minute they’re both naked from the waist down, clothes kicked to all sides of the bathroom, and Jun wastes no time in sliding his cock against Sho’s.  
  
Sho’s surprised groan is one of the happiest sounds Jun has ever heard in his life, and he can’t stop to think about anything except the hysterical, hazy pleasure shooting through his skin. He takes a hold of Sho’s hip, thumb digging into bone, and rocks forward carefully. Sho groans again, and this time lets his head fall back against the bathroom mirror. “ _Fuck_ ,” he says, teeth gritted, and scrambles for Jun, finally finding the hem of his shirt and sliding a hand up to his side, then to his back. “Matsumoto, what the hell are you waiting for, _keep_ —.”  
  
The rest of the sentence dissolves in a shocked inhale as Jun rocks forward again, and again, and this time doesn’t pause, not even when he feels Sho’s nails dig into his shoulders or when he can feel Sho’s own hips moving along to his own, missing the rhythm at first and then finding it, then falling out of it again as he scratches harder at Jun’s back (a reversal of scars, Jun thinks; he’ll have to get up tomorrow and examine at his own back in the mirror).  
  
“Can’t keep up?” Jun breathes in Sho’s mouth as their lips slide over each other—not quite a kiss, but they’re a little otherwise preoccupied.  
  
“You’re better at this than I thought you’d be,” Sho says, and the effort it takes for him to get all those words out in a coherent sentence drives Jun absolutely crazy. It also shows him that he’s not doing quite enough, so he reaches down and takes both their cocks in one hand as best he can, sliding up and down a few times, trying to keep himself in check long enough to see Sho’s mouth fall open into a wonderfully misshapen O.  
  
But Jun can’t hold it in for long, and the next thing he knows he’s panting into Sho’s t-shirt, hand still jerking the both of them, except instead of the perfect rhythm from earlier he’s simply tugging now for the sake of moving one step closer to coming all over the bathroom counter and their shirts and his hand. He imagines what that might look like—Sho’s loud groan filling every nook of Jun’s small bathroom as he bucks into Jun’s hand and comes all over his fingers, warm and sticky and wet, his other hand using Jun as a support to keep from falling to the linoleum in a heap of breaths and sweat. So much for a thesis defense, Jun thinks, grinning slightly as Sho whimpers to the still air around them.  
  
When Sho finally does come there’s hardly any sound, just a hasty grunt of a warning to Jun’s ear and then Jun _feels_ it in Sho’s quivering hips and the hot, wet stickiness suddenly filling his palm and covering his fingers. It’s a heavy silence that seems to wrap around Jun, covering him and bringing him closer to Sho—as if they could even _be_ closer at this point; Jun is practically climbing him—and then Jun feels it, Sho’s hand quickly pushing between them to wrap around Jun’s cock and he can’t even register how Sho’s fingers got there before he’s buckling forward, muffling his cries into Sho’s t-shirt and the quiet stillness around them. He only manages not to hit the floor thanks to Sho’s hands, which are also sticky and shaky, but still very much _there_.  
  
“We didn’t use the condoms,” is the first thing Sho says after a long time. He sounds like he’s just run a marathon. “And my hip hurts.”  
  
“Name your bruises after me,” Jun says, and kisses Sho before he can say anything about that.  
  
\--  
  
After Sho and Jun have had sex five times in a month (and during the last couple of times _finally_ doing it properly by making it to the bed and using a condom), Jun decides that he and Sho are now officially a thing. This means, of course, that they aren’t really dating, and they’re certainly not a couple. But they are a thing.  
  
So he tells two people: Nino and Aiba.  
  
Aiba and Jun met just last year, not at a party or a fraternity function but on the top floor of the library. Jun had been trying to cram a semester’s worth of notes about gender roles in Shakespearean plays—something he would never do again, as he can now recite select lines of _Twelfth Night_ after about five shots of whiskey—and he’d needed a break.  
  
All Jun remembers from that night is getting up from his study table to get a cup of coffee, and then colliding with a long boy with limbs that seemed to go everywhere at once. Jun was too tired to look where he was going and Aiba, well, Aiba was just there. Jun quickly learned that Aiba normally ran into things simply by _being_.  
  
“That’s my reproductive system!” Aiba had yelped, too loud for the library. “Sorry—sorry—I meant that’s the book that landed on your foot, not my _actual_ reproductive system—hey, are you okay?”  
  
The librarian found Aiba and scolded him like she was his grandmother, as if it was her sole duty in life to tell Aiba off for being too loud. Jun was about to tiptoe away and pretend like he wasn’t a part of the guilty party, but then he heard Aiba laugh and turned around just in time to see him smile and bow at the librarian.  
  
It was the laugh, and then the smile, that made Jun stay. He couldn’t lie about it then, and he can’t lie about it now: Aiba is beautiful. Not just pretty, but beautiful in the way where you just couldn’t help but stop and stare at him, or make him laugh just to hear the sound ringing in your ears forever. So Jun stuck around after the collision and helped Aiba with his books, and then Aiba went and bought the biggest cup of coffee he could find on campus with as many shots as espresso as he was allowed to ask for.  
  
“I bet strangers buy you coffee all the time,” Aiba had said when he gave the cup to Jun. “You’re in that frat, aren’t you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jun had said, and offered a sip to Aiba. “Are you in one?”  
  
“I was.” And Aiba had laughed. “That didn’t work out.”  
  
Jun failed his test the next day because he stayed up for too long listening to Aiba tell his story about how he’d accidentally rushed the Christian frat freshman year and only realized it when the brothers kept telling him to “have a blessed day.” (“I just thought they were being nice! Oh, and they had these fish magnets on their car bumpers,” he’d said, and drew one on a piece of paper. “God fish or something.”) He’d decided that hearing Aiba talk about his biology classes and being pre-med was more interesting than reading about Desdemona in Othello. And even if Aiba did ask Jun if he thought it was possible to ride an ice floe all the way from Hokkaido to Tokyo Bay, Jun still doesn’t regret anything that happened that night.  
  
In fact, if Jun had the choice, he would marry Aiba and have babies with Sho.  
  
“You can’t have babies with Sho-chan, Matsujun,” Aiba says now, chin perched atop a stack of medical textbooks he just got from the health sciences library. “That’s physiologically impossible.”  
  
Jun rolls his eyes. “You can be the godfather,” he says, and watches Aiba go from skeptical to positively beaming in no time. “Now what were you saying about physiologically impossible?”  
  
“Men can’t have babies _now_ ,” Aiba says, and then purses his lips. “But science does great things, you know! One day that might be different.”  
  
Jun is about to comment on how excruciatingly painful that sounds and maybe he should just adopt babies with Sho instead, but Aiba isn’t finished.  
  
“Have you told Oguri-kun about this?”  
  
“Not yet,” Jun lies. He wasn’t planning on telling Shun at all, mainly because he doesn’t feel that Shun should be rewarded with juicy secrets until the whole pregnancy scare thing is figured out (also, it hurts Jun to say it, but he’s been dreading the day he has to help Shun shop for baby booties and diapers).  
  
But Jun just feels like he _can’t_ tell Shun. It’s not so much that he doesn’t want to—something inside Jun just finds his fling with Sho something that should be kept a secret from Shun for as long as possible. Shun is busy with his classes, and has acting gigs on the side, and now he has to worry about potential Yamada Yuu babies running around. Plus, they haven’t spoken to each other about things like this in ages—Jun didn’t even know Shun liked Yuu—and just coming out of the blue with “Hey Shun, so Sho and I are a thing, isn’t that awesome” seems strange nowadays. And now that they’re seniors, Jun feels like he shouldn’t have to trouble Shun with things that don’t concern him.  
  
“Matsujun?” When Jun looks up, Aiba is frowning. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I miss Shun,” Jun says. It’s not an answer, but he knows Aiba will go with it. “Is that weird?”  
  
“Not really,” Aiba says, and moves his stack of books to the side so he can see Jun better. “You guys haven’t been hanging out that much lately. It makes sense.”  
  
Jun stares hard at the title of the first book in Aiba’s stack, _A Comprehensive History of Blood Diseases and their Origins_ , before answering. “He thinks he got somebody pregnant.”  
  
“Oooooooh,” Aiba says, eyes as wide as the blown-up blood cells on his book cover. “Is he going to have to take out another loan to help with child support?”  
  
“I hope not,” Jun says, and sighs heavily, dropping his chin to his chest. “He’s really nervous, though.”  
  
“You know how to cheer him up? Throw him a maybe-baby shower!” Aiba suggests. “Or not,” he adds after seeing Jun’s face.  
  
He would never throw Shun a maybe-baby shower, mainly because Jun never wants to plan anyone’s baby shower in his life, and he would rather eat his own slippers than participate in those godawful games. But he does love planning parties, especially if they get to be held at PA Phi. That’s his territory, and Jun knows it well.  
  
And Shun does love parties. If Jun threw a party for Shun at the frat and invited all their friends, it would make him forget about this pregnancy scare business and cheer him up like nothing else could.  
  
“If I threw a party at the frat, would you come?”  
  
Aiba tilts his head, wondering. “Hm,” he hums. “Only if you promise me that you’ll tell Oguri-kun about Sho.”  
  
He holds out his pinky.  
  
Jun stares at it. “Seriously?”  
  
“Matsujun,” Aiba warns. “The pinky promise is _binding_. And there’s no chance of bacterial transfusions that you might get with a blood pact! It’s strong _and_ safe.”  
  
Jun can’t argue with that. He touches his pinky finger to the tip of Aiba’s. “Fine. Done.”  
  
“No,” Aiba says firmly, and grabs Jun’s pinky with his own, tangling them together in a tight grip. “ _Now_ it’s done.”  
  
Jun likes to live up to his promises, especially if he makes them with Aiba. But this one may be a little harder to keep.  
  
\--  
  
Barely a block away from the house, Jun gets mugged.  
  
Well—not _mugged_ , per se. But Jun is pretty sure having someone tiny and quick jump on him from behind isn’t a friendly gesture, even if they back off right away and don’t go anywhere near his wallet.  
  
“Sorry,” the small person says. “I couldn’t help it.”  
  
Jun glares. “Really? Did you _really_ have to jump on me?”  
  
“You’re cute and jumpable,” Becky says, and plows right on before Jun can say anything about that. “Are you on the way back to the house? Can I come? I have some business.”  
  
“Can’t you do that at your _own_ house?”  
  
Becky points to the pink Greek letters—Zeta Tau Delta Pi—on her lime green tank top and then makes two thumbs down. “You know the rules,” she says. “No booze, no boys.”  
  
ZTDPi is PA Phi’s sister sorority, and probably not half as fun a place to be if you can’t drink or fool around inside the house. At least, that’s how Jun thinks of it. He’s known Becky for a couple of years now ever since she joined ZTDPi during the spring rush of her freshman year, and now that she’s the president and Jun is soon to be president of his frat, they’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other pretty soon.  
  
Not that Jun particularly minds. He doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone who could keep his brothers as much in check as Becky does, except maybe Sho.  
  
“Who do you need to talk to? It’s not official business, or I would know about it.”  
  
“You don’t know _everything_ , Matsujun,” Becky says, and pokes Jun in the chest with her index finger. “I just wanted to check our calendar with yours and see if we could do a mixer.”  
  
“We could,” Jun says, and rubs the spot on his chest where Becky poked him. “I was just thinking of having a party or something.”  
  
“Perfect!” Becky claps her hands, and Jun watches her long, brown ponytail swing behind her like a tail. “We can tell the rush girls it’s mandatory. They can take some boys off your hands.”  
  
_Rush_. Jun knew he was forgetting something. So far, he hasn’t done anything to help out the fall recruitment chair, but he hasn’t asked for any help so far—Toma is independent enough, despite the sleepwalking. But he has no idea of the size of the group, or if there’s anyone shady that he might need to weed out. On the other hand, there could be some spunky underclassmen who could take on leadership for next year.  
  
Jun takes rush seriously. After all, that’s how he met Shun.  
  
“Come on,” Jun says, and turns on his heel. “Let’s talk about this at the house.”  
  
Where Jun walks, Becky skips. She knows exactly where the house is, and bounds ahead of Jun humming a song that she probably just made up on the spot. By the time he catches up to her she’s sitting on the wooden bleachers in front of the house, swinging her legs back and forth to the tune in her head.  
  
“Hey,” Becky says when Jun passes her. “What’s wrong with you?”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Jun is starting to wonder if he’s just got a giant zit in the middle of his face that tells everyone about all the problems in his life.  
  
“You seem _weird_ ,” she says, suddenly standing and leaning in close to his face. Jun can feel her breath tickling his neck, and he feels like she’s going to swoon into him at any second.  
  
“I am no such thing,” Jun says, and pulls back from Becky’s stare. “Also, you’re in my bubble.”  
  
“Becky-san, you can come into my bubble,” says a tiny voice from the porch, and when Jun turns he sees wide eyes and a mess of wiry bedhead—at three in the afternoon. “It’s open.”  
  
The noise Becky makes is somewhere between a snort and an offended huff. Jun doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with an extremely sexually repressed Maru right now, but just then the door opens and Nino appears with a can of Red Bull in one hand and a donut in the other.  
  
“I heard that,” he says to Maru. “Man, we can’t take you _anywhere_.”  
  
“That’s what Ryo-chan said too,” Maru says, and Jun can feel his voice slipping into a whine.  
  
“Then don’t invite people into your bubble.” Jun pushes past Nino and Maru and leads Becky into the hallway entrance of the house with an outstretched hand, even though she knows exactly where to go. He’s just concerned that she might get eaten by Maru.  
  
The business office of the frat is right off the main entranceway, sandwiched between a wall of obnoxious PA Phi tapestries and a large frame of the current brothers of the frat. Sho’s face is at the very top, next to Jun’s as the president-elect and Shun’s as vice president. (But Jun is wearing the best tie. There has never been any competition for that.)  
  
“That’s a nice tie,” Becky says, pointing to Jun’s picture on the frame. “Can I borrow it?”  
  
“No,” Jun says, and pushes open the door to the office without even knocking.  
  
Sho is sitting on the desk—not on the chair, but on the desk—with his glasses on and his shirt undone to the second button. He has his legs crossed, and when he sees Jun he smiles.  
  
Jun grins back. Then Becky walks into the room, and Sho drops a manila envelope on his lap.  
  
“Wow,” she says, and looks from Jun to Sho and back again. “You guys are really obvious, you know that?”  
  
“Good afternoon,” Sho says, clearing his throat. “Welcome to the business office.”  
  
“You mean welcome to the brothel,” Becky says, and sits down in Sho’s plush swivel chair behind the desk. “So can we have this mixer I was talking about? Matsujun says he loves the idea.”  
  
Sho raises his eyebrows at Jun. “Will this be a rush event?”  
  
“Yes,” Jun lies, and then shrugs. “Or a Shun event.”  
  
Surprisingly this makes sense to Sho, but Jun wouldn’t expect anything less from someone who’s been the president of a fraternity for the past two years. “Okay,” he says.  
  
Becky has since crossed her legs in the chair and is swiveling around. “That’s it?” she says, voice fading in and out as she circles around.  
  
“It’s for rush, so it’s fine.” Sho hands the manila envelope to Jun and stands up. “If you break my chair, Becky, you’re going to have to pay for it.”  
  
“Put it on ZTDPi’s tab,” she says, and swivels around one more time before sliding off, albeit a little unsteadily. “Next weekend, then?”  
  
“Done,” Jun says, without even thinking about it. Not that he needs to—he’s thrown together events in hours. They weren’t spectacular, but they got done. And a week is more than enough time for him to create a party that will make Shun so excited he’ll forget all about pregnancies and periods.  
  
“Lovely,” Becky chirps. She salutes both Jun and Sho before stepping out of the doorway.  
  
“Let me walk you to the door,” Sho calls, but Becky waves him off.  
  
“I think you have more important things to take care off,” she says.  
  
Jun loves Becky. He also loves Sho, but that’s a little easier for him to show right now.  
  
\--  
  
“And then he had a manila envelope on his crotch,” Nino repeats. “And then you guys did it on the desk.”  
  
“Yes.” Jun is positively beaming. He’s showing more teeth right now than he ever has. “My back hurts. I think I was on a stapler.”  
  
“Wow,” Nino says, “you’re _stupid_.”  
  
Maybe he is, but all Jun definitely knows right now is that Sho is wonderful and the sun is shining every day, even though they’re in the basement and the only lights down here are the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and the faint blue auras coming from the computers. But he’s still sure it’s shining.  
  
“Your face right now is too much for me,” Nino continues. “Please leave.”  
  
“No, wait,” Jun says, and he’s still grinning like an idiot but he really does have a serious question for Nino. “Can you start handling social media for the party?”  
  
“I thought it was a rush event.” Nino opens his laptop and Jun watches the light flood his face. “Do you really want the rest of the world to show up at this party?”  
  
“No. That’s why we’re going to have bouncers. Matsuken for the front door and Hina for the back—you know, the usual.”  
  
“Fine,” Nino says. “I hope you’re happy when there are hordes of anonymous, unconscious freshmen on our porch, because I’m not cleaning them up.”  
  
“No one will be unconscious,” Jun says, and he means it. He’s seen Sho deal with the police too many times, and he definitely doesn’t have enough patience to deal with them anymore. But most importantly he’s not about to let a bunch of eighteen-year-olds pass out within fifty yards of his frat house. If that happens, they will _pay_.  
  
Nino sends a message to the closed PA Phi Facebook group:  
  
there will be a mixer the last weekend in oct. if you are rushing either paphi or ztdpi this is MANDATORY. usual house rules apply: if you don’t find yourself in a bed by the time the party winds down, get the hell out. we have a lot of bushes in the yard and people have told us they’re pretty comfy. NO PUKING ON THE LAWN. if you don’t like our PJ, we don’t like you. if you are underage we are not taking care of your ass so come with someone who will. also prez-elect jun is now claimed so if you planned on showing up just to get in his panties it’s not gonna work. see you there. – x  
  
“Who is ‘x’?” Jun says, squinting at the screen. “And I think you typed ‘pants’ wrong.”  
  
“I know exactly what I typed,” Nino says. He hits the send button before Jun can say anything else. “And there’s no way in hell I would put my name out there for the entire world to know I’m the one writing the messages.” Jun knows that this is Nino’s way of saying that he likes to see girls wildly running past him at parties, wondering where the mysterious X could be hiding.  
  
“Now go away,” he continues, and turns away from Jun. “I have to write a program that will illegally transfer tons of data from the tower in the CompSci lab to my new hard drive. And you should go make up with Shun or something.”  
  
Jun pretends to be affronted, but he knows there was no way he could hide from Nino in the first place. He’s just like that—he knows everything, even though he hardly talks to anyone and doesn’t get out of the house all that much.. “We don’t need to make up,” Jun says. “We just haven’t talked in two weeks.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Nino says, and Jun watches him boot up a computer that is bigger than his entire dresser. “That’s pretty much the same thing with you two.”  
  
He’s right, and Jun knows this well, but he’s not about to give in so easily. “I’ll wait until the party,” he says.  
  
“So then wait until the party.” In the blue glow of the computer screen, Nino looks positively evil. “Wait until then, and then watch Shun freak out about how you’re ignoring him _on top of_ his freaking out that Yamada might be pregnant. So he’s going to get totally wasted, and he’s going to find someone else to comfort him, and depending on how that turns out he might have to start counting two sets of periods. All because you waited a week.”  
  
Jun stares. He can’t think of anything to say.  
  
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Nino says, and hands Jun a can of Red Bull. “Now close your mouth and get out of here.”

\--

Four days later, when the house is quiet after midnight, Jun finds himself in Sho’s room stripped down to his boxers.  
  
“I finished my thesis,” Sho says, and bites Jun’s earlobe. It feels gentler than usual, but Jun might just be imagining things. “I’ll be on leave until graduation in December.”  
  
Jun swallows. He’s not sure what to focus on—Sho’s hands wandering up and down his torso, the lips settling on the slope of his neck, or the words coming out of Sho’s mouth. The last is probably the most important, but then again that doesn’t mean much when compared to the other two. “On leave?” he repeats, and lets his eyes close. “What’s that mean?”  
  
“I’ll be gone after next week,” Sho says.  
  
Jun opens his eyes. Something, suddenly, feels very out of place.  
  
“Wait,” he says, and steps out of Sho’s arms. “I thought you were graduating in December.”  
  
“I had until December to finish my thesis, but I only needed a month.” The words feel spidery, like Jun can almost imagine them crawling over his shoulders, sitting heavy. “The committee granted me early leave, so I’m going home after my oral defense next week.”  
  
_Home_. Jun lets the word float in his mind for a bit as it registers—Sho is leaving. Sho will no longer be the president of PA Phi and Jun will no longer have the word ‘elect’ in his title. He’ll move out of his big room at the end of the second floor hallway, and the business office will never be the same again. Despite the fact that they weren’t really going out, the thought of Sho leaving makes Jun wilt a little inside. Or perhaps even a lot.  
  
“Congratulations on finishing your thesis,” Jun says, and tries to mean it. There is a sudden twisting in his gut that is growing by the second.  
  
“Jun,” Sho says, maybe sadly, or maybe Jun is just imagining it. “You knew this was coming.”  
  
_Yeah_ , Jun tries to say, but the word sticks on his throat. It has always been difficult for Jun to tell people how he feels outright, but now it seems harder than ever. He exhales and looks up at the ceiling, counting the cracks right above his head one by one before turning to face Sho.  
  
“It’s been fun,” he says, and this time he doesn’t have to try to fake the sincerity.  
  
It has been fun. Jun will miss the silly grin on Sho’s face, and he will especially miss kissing the corners of that smile every free moment of the day, but the truth is that no matter how sad Jun is now, this Sho-thing—no matter how wonderful—was a temporary thing from the start.  
  
“Miss me,” Sho says on Jun’s lips, and Jun figures he just didn’t hear the _will you_ , but this is one misheard command he will obey without being told. He lets Sho take over where it has always been the other way around, and doesn’t say anything when Sho lowers him to the bed, hand cradling the dip in his lower back, holding him in place. It’s as if Sho is afraid Jun might run away from this moment now that they’ve essentially broken up.  
  
But he wouldn’t do that. Even now, even if Sho’s kisses hurt for a different reason, Jun would stay if Sho changed his mind before morning.  
  
“I hope you’re okay,” Sho says the next morning. He smells like Jun. “We should have done this last year. It would’ve been great.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jun says, and slips out of bed. He has to start getting used to waking up alone again—or at least waking up to someone he barely knows again. “But I had Shun.”  
  
Sho smiles. “You did,” he says, and walks Jun to the door for the last time.  
  
\--  
  
After the break-up, Jun throws himself into planning the party, which means that he forgets about the rest of his life. Aiba has to send him text messages every hour reminding him to do his homework (not that that’s much different than usual; Aiba usually sends him a text every hour about nothing in particular) and Toma has to drag him to frat meetings. Eventually even Nino has to come out of his basement to try and cheer Jun up by offering him donuts and energy drinks.  
  
“Jun, come on,” Nino says when Jun tells him very bluntly where to shove his energy drinks. “You look like shit. You’ll never get laid again if you keep on looking and acting like those ugly monsters that attack you on the beaches in Dragon Quest.”  
  
“That’s okay,” Jun says, even though he is twenty-one and horny _all the time_ by nature, and so that’s actually not fucking okay at all. “Are you here to help me plan this party, or are you just going to stand there with donuts?”  
  
“They’re good,” Nino says. “I like them.” He puts the small box on the edge of Jun’s desk, and when Jun glances at it he sees that the only ones left are mini chocolate donuts, four in a row and untouched.  
  
Nino knows Jun loves chocolate. He also knows that Jun won’t eat chocolate unless he’s completely miserable, like now.  
  
“Thanks,” Jun mumbles, not looking at Nino, and takes one. The sugar melts on his tongue, and he hasn’t eaten chocolate in so long that the flavor rushes him all at once, warm and tingly. Before he knows it, all four of the donuts are gone.  
  
“Now that you’ve eaten for the first time in a year,” Nino says, “I am being forced to go bar hopping tonight, and I’m forcing you to come with me. ‘No’ is not an acceptable answer.”  
  
“I would rather dig a hole in the ground and die there,” Jun says, trying to sound as grumpy as possible, but he has chocolate crumbs on his chin and so Nino just laughs. “No. I have to plan this party.”  
  
“You have been planning this party for five days,” Nino says. “We actually have an event chair that can do that, you know. You’re the president now. You can go out and have fun and people will do your work _for_ you.”  
  
Nino isn’t wrong, but Jun likes to put together the frat’s events himself. It’s just easier that way. If he knows exactly what’s going on in his house, he won’t be surprised by anything, and he doesn’t have to worry about things going awry. (His frat brothers going crazy is a different story, but Jun can’t be held responsible for what they do. Alcohol is a drug, after all.)  
  
“Speaking of the event chair,” Nino continues, “Ryo-tan is the one who wants to go out.”  
  
Jun looks up. “Since when did you go to bars with Nishikido?”  
  
“Since tonight,” Nino says, and wrinkles his nose. “I owe him.”  
  
Jun can’t even begin to imagine what Nishikido did to have Nino owe him. Knowing Nino, it has to be something that he couldn’t achieve himself even with the help of his huge network. Maybe he couldn’t get his hands on a rare computer part—but Nishikido wouldn’t be able to help him out with that. He probably wouldn’t have been able to do much for a video game, either.  
  
It had to do with a girl, then.  
  
“You owe him,” Jun repeats. “What are you going to do, buy him double shots and then give him a piggyback ride home when he’s too drunk to stand?”  
  
“I don’t give anyone piggyback rides,” Nino says, and Jun stops himself before he says _because you’ll be crushed by their weight_. “And no. I owe him one drink and a game of foosball and then he’ll give me what he owes me.”  
  
“You guys are dirty,” Jun says, but he’s cheered up a little bit, mostly from the chocolate but also because thinking about Nino going through such lengths just for a girl is making Jun extra delighted. He loves seeing Nino step out of his comfort zone. “Will you be my wingman if I go out tonight?”  
  
“I’ll be busy,” Nino says. “Get Ryo-tan to do it.”  
  
“Busy with what?”  
  
“ _Someone_.”  
  
That seals the deal. “Fine,” Jun says, “I’ll come with. But only if you promise me you’ll take her home.”  
  
“Shut up,” Nino says, face slightly pink. “Oh, and one more thing.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I have another friend coming,” Nino says, and smiles so devilishly Jun swears he sees fangs. “And I think you’ll like him.”  
  
\--  
  
Going to bars with Nishikido is like sitting in the backseat of a car with a reckless driver at the wheel. In fact, that might actually be the way he drives, and Jun wouldn’t be surprised. He just hopes he never has to actually have Nishikido drive him somewhere, because if the kid steers like he bar hops, everyone on the street would be dead.  
  
Jun is the exact opposite. When he goes out, he likes to savor each place he goes to—order a drink, sit at the bar in the exact same place he sits every time, and stick around for a while. Of course it depends on his mood, because if Jun wants to dance the night away he will sure as hell dance the night away (and probably the morning too), but if he’s bar hopping he likes to take it slow. In fact, he’d rather call it bar visiting. Jun has friends behind the counter of each place downtown, and they all know exactly what drink to make him before he even needs to ask.  
  
But tonight is a little different, since he’s following Nishikido and Nino around. Jun finds himself dragged to places he never knew existed (mainly because they’re underground and smell like bombs of cigarette smoke went off in a small space), and he feels very out of place. Unfortunately he didn’t get the leather jacket memo: Nino and Nishikido look like brothers in black, hair all tousled in just the right way, and the moles on their faces seem to stand out more than usual tonight. Jun has always told himself that if he had no choice to be with Nino, he wouldn’t mind all that much, because those moles are something else.  
  
The third place of the night is called Johnny’s, and it looks like no one has cleaned the place in three years but it’s still packed. Jun has never been able to figure out why college students like dirty places—he might like _doing_ dirty things, but only in clean places.  
  
He doesn’t even want to sit in a booth, but he feels silly just standing, so he slides in across from Nino and tries not to think about why the leather is so sticky.  
  
“Shots,” is the only thing Nishikido says before fishing out his cell phone and burying himself in a text.  
  
Jun sighs. “We’ve been to three places,” he says to Nino, angling himself so that Nishikido can’t hear him, “and he’s had a shot at each one. Is he going to be dead by the end of the night?”  
  
“One can only hope,” Nino says, and squints at the girls behind the bar. “Go order. Three vodka, that shit is cheap.”  
  
“What? No,” Jun says, and scratches at the collar of his pastel button-down. It’s the mint one today, because no other color screams _I am on the rebound_ than a fresh green one (at least to Jun). “Why don’t you?”  
  
“She’s not here yet,” Nino snaps, and runs a hand through his hair. He looks like a miserable six-year-old at a party with an empty piñata.  
  
“Your friend’s not here yet either,” Jun says. “I’m even wearing mint.”  
  
“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” Nino says.  
  
Jun is about to explain when suddenly Nino shoots out of his seat and to the bar. He has never moved that fast before, except maybe to be the first one in line to get the newest Dragon Quest or at a time sale for external hard drives—but even then it’s not the same as what Jun just saw. It’s like someone lit his jacket on fire.  
  
“There she is,” Nishikido says, without looking up, and when Jun does he can’t help but laugh.  
  
Riisa. So it’s Riisa, then. A year younger than him, treasurer of ZTDPi and apparently a bartender at Johnny’s, she is possibly the cutest thing Jun has ever seen, all mousey nose and a smile full of teeth. It might be because she looks a lot like Nino, but Jun would rather think of her as the girl that Nino stole his looks from, because at least she doesn’t live in a basement and build computers as a hobby. Well—according to Becky she doesn’t leave the house all that often, and she likes to DJ alone in her room with bedazzled earphones the size of her face. But Jun can deal with that.  
  
“Why does he owe you for this?” Jun wonders aloud, watching Nishikido’s nose twitch in the glow of his cell phone screen. “Couldn’t he have just come here on his own?”  
  
“Yeah, but I run this place,” Nishikido says, and when he looks up his smirk is so pronounced it could probably become its own person.  
  
“You run this place.” Jun raises his eyebrows. “No you don’t, Nishikido.”  
  
“Yes I do.”  
  
“No, you don’t.” Jun is tired now. “I’m going to order shots,” he says, and un-sticks himself from the booth.  
  
“Get three vodka—shit is cheap, man,” Nishikido calls. Jun just waves a hand behind him.  
  
When he reaches the bar, it’s like entering a whole other dimension where Nino knows how to flirt without coming off as an asshole—or at least Riisa likes him just as much and so he doesn’t need to try that hard. Nino is practically sitting on the counter and he doesn’t have a drink, and Riisa is looking at him like she wants to quit her shift in the next five minutes and score herself a boy in a leather jacket.  
  
Jun considers squishing himself next to Nino and ordering vodka shots from Riisa just to get back at Nino for—well, for four years of friendship with Nino. But Jun isn’t that kind of guy, and he would rather embarrass Nino tomorrow morning than now in front of Riisa, who Jun can’t help but like. He’s heard that she’s a little crazy, but something about her smile makes Jun think otherwise.  
  
Except for that time he saw her walking around campus wearing a hot pink leopard-print suit, but that’s a different story altogether.  
  
“Three vodka shots,” he says to someone else behind the bar.  
  
“You sure you want to make that three?” she glances over at Nino and Riisa, who are—well, they’re no longer there.  
  
Trust Nino to force you out of the house when you’re miserable, promise to introduce you to a friend and then leave with a girl right in the middle of it all. Jun shrugs. “Two’s fine,” he says, and then remembers he has to spend the rest of the night with Nishikido and he’s not even remotely tipsy. “Actually—I’ll stick with three.”  
  
Jun brings the shot glasses back to the booth and sits one right by Nishikido’s hand.  
  
“Nino left,” Jun says, and knocks back a shot. “With Riisa.”  
  
“Good,” Nishikido says, and when he grins he reminds Jun of devilish Nino, except with a ton more teeth.  
  
Jun takes his second shot with Nishikido. It’s the cheapest vodka he’s ever tasted, and it makes the inside of his throat feel like it’s going to peel, but it’s working: he already feels a little dizzy. That might be due to the fact that he skipped dinner to do his hair, but it doesn’t matter now anyway. Here is Jun, wearing mint and decidedly on the rebound, and if Nishikido can get Nino the girl he wants, then maybe he can work his magic on Jun too.  
  
“More shots?” Jun asks, at the same time Nishikido nods and says they need more shots.  
  
And the vodka appears without either of them asking for it. Or maybe Nishikido did ask for it, Jun can’t tell. All he knows is that suddenly he’s got another glass in his hand, and then one more, and since there isn’t really anything he can talk to Nishikido about that isn’t “when you don’t smile with all those damn teeth you are really damn hot” or “I hope you don’t have a license because I think you’d kill everyone on the road,” he just keeps drinking and drinking. It’s not the best idea Jun has had, but right now it feels like the only one he has.  
  
“Hey,” Jun says, after more shots than he can count on one hand. Nishikido has had way more, but he doesn’t even look tipsy. Who knew he was a tank? “Neeshkido.”  
  
“That’s not my name,” Nishikido says, laughing a little, and reaches out across the table to steady Jun. “Just call me Ryo.”  
  
“Ryo,” Jun says, and shuts his eyes tight, trying to squeeze the drunk out or the sober back in—he’s not sure. His tongue feels heavy and Nishikido’s first name is strange in his mouth, an odd combination of sounds, but he says it again just to test. And again, and again.  
  
“Stop,” Nishikido says, and swallows hard. He has a sharp Adam’s apple, and Jun wants to touch it. “You don’t need to say it a billion times, okay.”  
  
Jun cocks his head. “How about later?”  
  
“Later,” Nishikido repeats, and narrows his eyes. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Matsumoto.”  
  
“I’m a sincere person,” Jun says, and attempts to sound as sober as possible. Nishikido just shakes his head and snorts. It’s cute, Jun thinks, and it makes him want another vodka shot, but when he tries to order Nishikido tells the bartender not to listen to him.  
  
It occurs to Jun suddenly that the guy who’s been giving them shots looks like the sleepy grad student TA who taught his sculpture class two years ago. It’s like he woke up for a second and realized that the hand reaching out to take his empty shot glasses is the same hand that reached out to a lump of clay on the table two years ago. It is his fingers that Jun remembers: they remind Jun of icicles, the way they hang off the rooftops in the wintertime, thin and beautiful.  
  
Or maybe he’s just drunk and imagining things. Why would a grad student still be here after two years?  
  
But he’s still standing there. “Ah,” he says, and Jun has no choice but to look up. “I remember you.”  
  
“Good,” Jun says, because his eyes are crossing and he can’t think of what else to say.  
  
“Who is this?” Nishikido looks from Jun to the grad student and then back again.  
  
“Ohno,” Jun says, because he’s just remembered and he is proud of himself for that, since he can vaguely tell that he’s pretty damn drunk. “His name is Ohno.”  
  
He drags out the last syllable, just to fill the empty space in the booth, and giggles.  
  
“You’re fucking wasted,” Nishikido says, but he doesn’t sound too upset about it.  
  
Ohno laughs. “Just let him be,” he says, and takes away the empty shot glasses. When he walks away he clinks.  
  
If Jun remembers correctly, he got an A in that sculpture class, but it wasn’t very hard. Nino took it with him and they made mugs for their final project: Nino’s was narrow, like a champagne glass with a handle, but it was smooth in all the right places and he glazed it blue. Jun’s was fatter, more like a real mug, but you could see finger marks and it wasn’t exactly rounded like he meant it to be.  
  
Ohno liked it. Jun remembers the way he looked at the misshapen thing, like it was worth a good grade and a few words of praise even though it couldn’t really hold more than an ounce of coffee.  
  
“This is nice,” he had said, and Jun watched him pick it up and turn it over.  
  
He didn’t expect anything else, but then Ohno smiled at Jun. “You worked hard,” he’d said. “Good job.”  
  
Ohno wasn’t much of a teacher, but Jun wasn’t much of a student, and so he figured they matched. Or mismatched, like how Ohno thought Jun’s mug had been pretty despite the mistakes in the design.  
  
And right now, Jun is drunk. Jun is really, _really_ drunk and he’s already undone his shirt (or maybe Nishikido did it, he can’t remember; _someone’s_ fingers were on his collarbone) down to the third button and his hair is all messed up. If he were anyone else, he wouldn’t want to do what is brain is proposing, but this is his brain on drugs and he’s willing to go with wherever the night takes him, just like Nino decided to get off his lazy ass and pursue a girl for once in his life.  
  
“Ryo,” Jun says, and Nishikido looks up. Sometime in the past hour he shed his leather jacket, and the scoop of his shirt is low enough for Jun to rest his entire hand on the middle of Nishikido’s chest. “Let’s bring Ohno home.”  
  
Nishikido chokes. “ _What_?”  
  
“Come on,” Jun insists. “He’s a nice guy.”  
  
“Is that what you do, Matsumoto? You sleep with all the guys you think are nice?”  
  
Jun pauses. If he really thinks about it, then yes, that is probably the truth. But then again, nobody ever stopped him. Nobody has ever pulled Jun aside and said, “Look, you can’t assume that every nice guy you meet wants to have sex with you.”  
  
But the pattern shows otherwise. Jun can’t argue with history.  
  
“Yes,” he finally says. “Which is why I don’t want to sleep with you.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Nishikido says. He pushes the hair out of his eyes and frowns. “That’s not what you were saying earlier.”  
  
The sulky look suits him. Whether Jun will think this in the morning, when all the alcohol has left his body and his head is positively pounding, he can’t say for sure, but right now he loves it. When Nishikido is happy, Nishikido looks smug, and Jun much prefers this: the slow downward curve of his mouth, eyes lowered, cheeks sucked in.  
  
“So you’re saying you wouldn’t mind, then,” Jun says, dropping his voice.  
  
Nishikido raises an eyebrow. When he leans forward, the neckline of his shirt falls forward and Jun can see into a narrow tunnel of shadowed skin.  
  
“Well,” he says, very slowly, “I’ve never had a threesome.”  
  
\--  
  
Jun hopes nobody will remember this in the morning. He has his fingers crossed on it, and it’s looking good, because he can’t really remember how he got from the bar to the house. In fact, if anyone asked Jun how he managed to convince his sculpture TA from two years ago to come home with one of his former students and a complete stranger after his bartending shift, Jun wouldn’t be able to say anything. He just _doesn’t know._  
  
Usually Jun would be worried about things like that. On another day he might take a minute to try and understand the moment, to write up a cast of characters—himself, Nishikido, Ohno—and how they got to the second floor of the PA Phi house without managing to trip and fall down the stairs. He might wonder why this is happening and then nod solemnly as he remembers the six—or seven, or eight—vodka shots. The cheap-ass vodka shots.  
  
But tonight there’s no time for any of that right now. He is wasted, and Nishikido has a cold hand flush against his back under the mint button-down. Ohno is somewhere behind, his breaths short and even as if he’s in no rush.  
  
“Hurry up before I change my mind,” Nishikido hisses, but Jun knows he wouldn’t.  
  
“This is a nice house,” Ohno says.  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” Jun mumbles, jiggling the doorknob so hard it threatens to fall off. Finally the door gives with one last push and he practically falls into the room headfirst; Nishikido follows, still standing straight (it is a mystery how one small person can be so unaffected by all that alcohol) and Ohno walks in slowly, looking closely at each of the things in Jun’s room.  
  
“Well,” Jun says, and nods to his empty room. “Welcome, I guess.”  
  
“This is a nice room,” Nishikido says, and kicks off his boots.  
  
“Too bad this is your first and last time.”  
  
Nishikido laughs, but he doesn’t sound amused. “You’re pleasant,” he says.  
  
“Ryo—,” Jun begins, but before he can finish Ohno takes his wrist and walks him to the bed like they have all the time in the world. “Oh—,” he tries again, and then realizes that he has no idea what to call Ohno.  
  
“Just sssh,” Ohno says, and pushes Jun back on the covers. “What’s your name?” He points at Nishikido.  
  
“Nishikido,” he says says, obliging for once. Maybe the alcohol is finally kicking in. “Are you going to have your way with him, or do I get to be a part of this?”  
  
“First of all,” Jun says, lifting his chin up to see the other two, “this is already a horrible threesome, because we are all still _clothed_.”  
  
It’s true, and Ohno laughs through his nose, looking from Jun to Nishikido and back again. It only takes a minute—Jun has been hot for _hours_ and the feeling of cool air on his skin is so great he doesn’t even bother with the sheets, just pulls them off the bed entirely and throws them to the floor.  
  
“You’ll regret that,” Nishikido says, looking at the tangle of cotton. He drops his own boxers on top of the pile and looks at Jun expectantly.  
  
“Nishikido,” Jun says, and manages to say it without slurring. He’s also trying not to focus on the serious boner right in front of his face, but that’s not too hard—the entire room is spinning around him. “You talk too much and you don’t use your mouth for the right things.”  
  
When Nishikido lunges—“I’ll show _you_ how to use your damn mouth”—Jun grabs his wrists and holds him there, keeping firm when he struggles. They keep at it for a second, a constant push-and-pull before Ohno slides up behind Nishikido and wraps one arm around his body, resting a hand flat on a stretch of abdomen.  
  
Jun stares past Nishikido. “You’re naked,” he says to Ohno. He’s not sure what he imagined Ohno to look like naked, but somehow the round slope of his shoulders and the dip of his stomach where his muscles tense is unexpected. He looks sharp in strange places, places Jun would like to explore.  
  
“Sex requires that,” Ohno replies. “And I was hot.”  
  
“Me too,” Nishikido says, and takes advantage of Jun’s momentary lapse to shove him on the bed and kiss him hard—a little like Sho, but different. The way Nishikido kisses reminds Jun of bittersweet chocolate and of the taut lines of his mouth when he sulks, dark and childish at the same time. He brings a hand up to Nishikido’s head and tangles his fingers in sweat-dampened hair—yes, Jun thinks, _yes_. Somewhere beyond Nishikido’s shoulder Ohno is hovering, one hand snaking down Nishikido’s back, saying things in an octave so deep it sounds like he’s growling in another language, quiet murmurings about the way the dip in Nishikido’s back fits Ohno’s fingers perfectly. Jun can imagine that. Nishikido looks like he would have a body that your hands would look good on.  
  
He also has hands that won’t stop moving, and Jun has to put his own above his head to accommodate Nishikido, who can’t seem to decide where he should touch. He has his lips on Jun’s, still, and every time Ohno does—whatever he’s doing back there, Jun can’t see—he moans against Jun, lips sliding, breath heavy and wet. And honestly, Jun doesn’t mind. Somewhere below where their legs have tangled, his cock is sliding right up against Nishikido’s, and the friction is fucking _delicious_. Jun knows that alcohol is supposed to make you feel less, but his senses all feel heightened at once, and each slight move Nishikido makes is lightning through Jun in one swift movement.  
  
When Jun feels Ohno’s fingers brush against his cock he moans, arching forward—not that he gets very far, since Nishikido has shifted all his weight to his hips and is pinning Jun to the bed. But he tries as hard as he can, searching for that hand. “Come on,” he full-on whines, and for lack of anything better to do sucks hard on Nishikido’s bottom lip before biting the red skin, intent on getting a reaction.  
  
The noise Nishikido makes is almost like a squeal, high-pitched and urgent, and Jun can feel Nishikido’s thighs twitch against his own. Not even a second passes before Nishikido goes in for another kiss, but instead of Jun’s lips settles on his neck and drags his teeth against the thin skin there before biting, canines like knives against Jun’s pulse.  
  
“ _Shit_ ,” Nishikido says, ragged, and Jun feels movement near their legs at the same time he hears Ohno mumble something absolutely filthy in Nishikido’s hair.  
  
That’s when Jun realizes two things—that Nishikido likes biting, and that Ohno’s hand is working Nishikido’s cock. If he moves a little to the right—just a bit, yes, right there—he can feel Ohno jerking Nishikido. His knuckles scrape against the underside of Jun’s thigh, and Nishikido is keening in his ear now, not even trying to hold back. Ohno’s hand is fast, like he does this often, like he’s done this to Nishikido before and knows exactly how he likes it.  
  
“Ohno,” Jun says, but it comes out more like a gasp. “Do you—?” He doesn’t know what the rest of the question is, but it’s something along the lines of _no one is touching you and I really want to be the one to do that_. Ohno grunts something in reply and he looks down at Nishikido, who is lying on Jun’s chest, hands scrabbling for something to hold onto and eventually settling on Jun’s right arm.  
  
“Nishikido,” Jun says, “I can’t feel my fucking legs.”  
  
“Shut— _ah_ ,” Nishikido manages to say, and turns his head into Jun’s chest. He’s too out of breath to say anything else. Each one of his quick breaths quake through Jun, and he swears he is about to go into overdrive—he has never seen anyone come before that hasn’t been the person he was doing something to. Right now, Jun is essentially a voyeur. It’s like he crept into the room to watch Ohno get Nishikido off and somehow managed to literally get underneath it all.  
  
“Sit up,” Jun demands, and Nishikido shakes his head. “Then look at me.”  
  
Nishikido turns his head. He looks like there is a wildfire in his eyes. Jun has never seen him so vulnerable, so completely open, and it makes him wish there could be another time like this, another time to tie Nishikido to the bed with his frat ties, blue and gold threads digging into the supple skin of his wrists as Jun teased him, bit a trail of teeth marks all the way down from his neck to his ankles. The noises that come out of Nishikido’s mouth are nothing like his voice—they are desperate, keening, needy; Jun wants a soundtrack of them to play over and over again when he is alone.  
  
“Look at me,” Jun says again, and Nishikido struggles to keep his head up.  
  
“Think about this,” Jun goes on, voice low enough so that only the two of them can hear. Above them, Ohno is concentrating so hard he has a bead of sweat trailing down his neck, and it slides until it reaches the hollow of his collarbone. “Think about it, Nishikido—you don’t even know Ohno. He’s jerking you off. He’s got a hand around your fucking cock, and he wants you to come all over his hand, and when you do that you’re gonna come all over me, too.” Nishikido makes a jumbled sound in his throat. “You’re about to come all over a complete stranger and my cock, Nishikido. What do you think about that? You want me to jerk off with your come when you’re done? Or do you want to suck it off me instead?”  
  
Nishikido comes a second later, his whole body stiffening and his breath catching in his throat before he groans a long string of profanities into Jun’s neck, loud and sincere. Jun finds it ridiculously hot. He can feel Nishikido coming slick all over his thigh, and Ohno’s fingers going all sticky in between their bodies. For a moment he loses himself in Nishikido’s heat, forgetting that Ohno is there too, forgetting, somehow, that no one has really touched him yet.  
  
But the realization comes back when Ohno moves and helps Nishikido roll over, and Jun suddenly feels cold—until he feels hands on his hips and a mouth closing over the head of his cock. Had Jun been any more turned on, he might have come just from that, but he just slides a hand into Ohno’s hair and tugs, probably harder than he should but he doesn't care. He’s so close already that he feels removed from reality, as if he’s tumbling so fast down a mountain that everything is one big blur of movement and feeling and nothing else matters.  
  
Blowjobs, Jun decides at that moment, are the best fucking things in the world.  
  
Ohno sucks like he’s done this before, just like he jerks like he does it a lot. And maybe he does—maybe Jun has been missing out for the past two years. He moans loudly as he thinks of Ohno on his knees, fucking him, taking him completely, and he would look as focused as he did a minute ago. He would be murmuring things in a growl into Jun’s ear, talking about how he’d like to take Jun in public, on the asphalt so hard that his knees and palms get tattooed with gravel. Jun thinks about the way Ohno might take his time just to make Jun suffer.  
  
Ohno takes a long lick of the underside of Jun’s cock, licking off everything Nishikido left. He is good with his tongue, so slow and so deliberate, and it feels like forever from the base to the top before Ohno pauses for the longest second before kissing the head. Jun’s hips are way off the bed—normally he tries not to do that, but to hell with everything right now—and he knows he’s close, it wouldn’t have taken long in the first place, not after seeing Ohno get Nishikido off the way he did, not being underneath the whole affair. He just needs something to push him over. Something, anything.  
  
This is when Jun notices Nishikido isn’t at his side anymore. He’s—shit. Jun looks past Ohno long enough to register that Nishikido is leaning over him, whispering in his ear, hand flying up and down Ohno’s cock like it’s not just a handjob but something much more than that. Ohno nods—Jun would love to know what Nishikido is saying; he can only imagine the extent of how ridiculously sexual it must be—and says something back to Nishikido so quietly it’s not even a whisper. Nishikido snorts and rests his face on Ohno’s shoulder.  
  
“He’ll love it,” he says, voice hoarse.  
  
_What?_ Jun tries to speak, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth when he opens it is a shocked gasp.  
  
Ohno looks up at Jun for a second. And then gently, so very gently, he scrapes his teeth against Jun’s cock.  
  
Jun unravels. He doesn’t even try to hide it, and the sound in this house travels, but he doesn’t care. Ohno’s name tumbles out of his mouth, over and over again; he doesn’t even know what’s going on around him but he thinks Ohno might be finishing in Nishikido’s hand right now. He just can’t tell. It takes him a few seconds to catch his breath and come down from the high, and when he does he’s still shaking.  
  
Ten minutes pass. Or fifteen, or twenty. Nobody moves.  
  
“I’m cold,” Nishikido says first.  
  
“The sheets are on the floor,” Jun mumbles.  
  
“I’ll get them.” Ohno offers, and Jun feels him lean over the edge of the bed. “They’re all tangled.”  
  
“So are we,” Jun says, and can’t help but laugh.  
  
\--  
  
That night Jun dreams about real life, or something like it. In his mind he sees Nishikido wake up with his hair flattened to one side and offer Ohno his shower. He sees Ohno smile in return, not so wide but thankful and warm, and he even feels the mattress shifting when the two of them slide off and walk out of Jun’s room. He hears the door shut behind them with a soft click.  
  
After that, there is darkness punctuated by streaks of color and moments of sound—something like voices, or music, or both.  
  
And then out of nowhere Shun walks into the picture. Jun can’t see his face, but he steps into the frame of the dream from somewhere offstage and walks around slowly. He takes a breath, and holds it. He lets it go.  
  
I miss him, Jun thinks, and then he wakes himself up.  
  
\--  
  
In the morning, everything hurts.  
  
“Hey,” someone says. They’re whispering very close to Jun’s ear. “Wake up.”  
  
Jun opens his eyes.  
  
Shun is sitting next to the bed like their house has suddenly become a hospital. He’s still wearing his pajamas, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in about two weeks, but he is there. Jun can’t remember the last time he woke up next to Shun. He misses it.  
  
“Hi,” Jun says, but his voice is too hoarse, and the word cracks in his throat.  
  
“Try again,” Shun says. He plays with the edge of the sheet by Jun’s shoulder.  
  
Jun coughs a couple of times. “It’s cold,” he finally says, and the words are still thin, but Shun hears him anyway.  
  
“Then move over,” he says.  
  
A beat passes. Jun is trying to think through what Shun just said, but his mind is just as hazy as the light filtering in through his window.  
  
“Move,” Shun says again.  
  
He looks so sleep-deprived Jun wouldn’t be surprised if Shun told him he hasn’t really slept in the past two weekends, just laid awake in bed analyzing the pattern in the wallpaper. Shun might even be hallucinating, he looks that far gone.  
  
But if he hallucinated his way into Jun’s room, into Jun’s bed, that’s perfectly okay.  
  
So Jun moves over.  
  
“Guess what,” Shun says once he’s stolen most of the covers from Jun.  
  
“My knees are exposed,” Jun says in return, and tries to tug the blanket toward him.  
  
Shun just grins. When he smiles he looks like a five-year-old, goofy and sweet, the kind of kid you’d feel bad for scolding. “She’s not pregnant.”  
  
Jun stops trying for the blanket.  
  
“That’s great,” he says after a moment, and sounds more relieved than he thought he would. In fact, he feels almost elated, and his bones feel a little less heavy. “That’s really great, Shun.”  
  
And he laughs. He doesn’t know why, but there’s a bubble in him that seems like it’s wanted to burst forever. He laughs so hard he shakes, shoulders quivering, and he knows Shun is really confused right now but he can’t stop to explain himself.  
  
“What the hell was that?” But Shun looks amused. “Do you think my problems are funny?”  
  
“No,” Jun says, and settles back into bed. “They’re hilarious.”  
  
“Shut up,” Shun says. He tries to kick Jun under the blanket but just ends up getting his foot caught in another sheet. After a second of struggling, he gives up and rests his leg on Jun’s.  
  
“I was going to come out with you guys last night,” he goes on. “But Yuu called me over, and that’s when she told me.”  
  
_Oh_. “Nino invited you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Shun says, and Jun shakes his head. Of course, of _course_ Nino would do that, the sneaky little bastard—but Jun is grateful that he tried anyway.  
  
After a few minutes, Jun can’t feel his leg anymore, but it’s not that uncomfortable. It’s not like last night. In fact, this feels right, like Jun should have stayed here all along. Not that he regrets anything that happened before this moment, but he thinks that this is where he was meant to be from the very beginning.  
  
He tells this to Shun, who wriggles his toes in response.  
  
“Remember when we did this when we were freshmen?” he finally says.  
  
“Remind me,” Jun says, even though he doesn’t need it.  
  
Shun kisses exactly like Jun remembers: like the summer of his sophomore year, the year he thought maybe he’d be a little wiser than his freshman self, but in the end he just got caught up in Shun all over again.  
  
Back then, at eighteen, Jun would have done anything for Shun. And he still would.  
  
\--  
  
On the day of the party, Jun makes a checklist of at least twenty items and hands it out to everyone in the frat (and makes an extra copy for Nino after he sees him make a paper plane out of it and fly it into the back of Toma’s head).  
  
“How are we paying for all this alcohol?” Hina wants to know. He’s holding the checklist like it might explode at any second.  
  
“We had enough leftover in our expense account to get some,” Jun says. “After Sakurai-kun balanced our checkbook we found out we had a lot to spare.”  
  
“May he rest in peace,” Nino says.  
  
“I’m not _dead_ ,” Sho says from somewhere in the crowd. “I haven’t even left yet.”  
  
“Anyway,” Jun continues, raising his voice, “just go through the checklist and make sure everything is in order. Keep the non-Greeks in line and make sure nothing gets too crazy. That’s it.”  
  
Sho finds Jun after everyone has scattered. “Everything looks great,” he says, and squeezes Jun’s shoulder.  
  
“I know,” Jun says. “This is your going-away party, after all.”  
  
Unlike Nino, Sho blushes gracefully, and Jun can’t help but admire the blossoming red on his cheeks. “I thought it was a Shun event?”  
  
“It was,” Jun says. That’s the only explanation he gives, and Sho doesn’t ask for anything more. He just nods like he understands—and maybe he does.  
  
But Jun will probably never know, and he’s okay with that.  
  
“Here,” he says, and pushes a bottle of Jack into Sho’s hands. “For you.”  
  
“What am I supposed to do with this?”  
  
“Get frisky. You’re graduating,” Jun says, and leaves him with that.  
  
By the time eleven rolls around, Jun has circled the house at least fifty-six times checking everything up and down and Shun is practically sparkling.  
  
“I _love_ parties,” he says.  
  
“I know,” Jun replies. It makes him happy to see Shun like this, just as he’s sure Shun is happy to see the bar. Truthfully it’s just a fold-out table sagging under the weight of too many bottles and stacks upon stacks of red Solo cups, but they’re college students, and resourcefulness is everything. It makes Jun cringe a little, but he knows that a broken table won’t hurt as much as a wrecked bar.  
  
PA Phi doesn’t have a lot of mixers during the year, mostly because the house is way off-campus and they would have to drive people back and forth. Jun has to admit it’s a little annoying, and he knows the guys would rather get wasted on a Saturday night than stay sober to cart freshmen and sophomores around, but he also secretly loves putting parties together. He loves the planning—deciding on the theme, picking out the music, seeing the furniture get pushed aside, buying the drinks—just as much as Shun loves the pounding music, slippery bodies and drunken opportunities.  
  
Though of course Jun won’t lie. He loves the fuzzy, questionable faces and warm nights just as much as anyone else, which is partly why he became president of the frat. After all, everyone wants to get in bed with the president.  
  
“J,” Nino says, sliding up next to him. “I just passed a girl who asked me where she could find Mr. X.”  
  
“I’m going to reveal your secret to everyone,” Jun says while doing a quick scan of the room. So far, everything looks fine—people are mingling, the drinks are flowing and the lights aren’t too bright or too dim.  
  
But one thing is still missing.  
  
“Where’s the music guy?”  
  
“Oh.” Nino turns to Jun with an unreadable expression. “Nobody told you? He canceled.”  
  
Jun frowns. “Why didn’t I hear about this?” His stomach has already twisted itself sore and the conversation hasn’t even lasted an entire minute.  
  
“Because we found someone else,” Nino says, and then waves at someone past Jun’s shoulder. “You remember Tegoshi, right, J?”  
  
If someone suddenly appeared and punched Jun in the face so hard he knocked out, he would love that person forever. Unfortunately he knows no one in the frat would punch him, so he just turns around and tries to set his expression into something pleasant.  
  
“Tegoshi,” Jun says, very slowly so that he doesn’t accidentally explode, “do you even know how to DJ?”  
  
Tegoshi looks a little bit like an overeager puppy with wispy hair and unnaturally white teeth. Jun supposes he’s cute enough, but being around him too much is like eating too much sugar at once and then feeling sick. But everyone seems to love him, and Jun has unfortunately walked into too many incidents involving someone in his frat and a naked Tegoshi.  
  
“Of course I do,” Tegoshi says, and gestures behind him to a chunk of equipment Jun is sure he has no idea how to use. “I even brought Shige to help me!”  
  
“I think he ran away.” Not that Jun is accusing Shige of anything. The poor kid has enough problems as is: being Tegoshi’s roommate because his best friend Koyama is studying abroad, trying to maintain a higher GPA than Sho, and writing his first novel about the hardships of college life. He doesn’t have the time or the presence to be hanging out at a frat party.  
  
“No,” says a squeaky voice from behind the equipment. “No, I’m here.”  
  
“You know what will make you feel better?” Nino says. Jun is willing to bet that whatever Nino is about to say will actually make Shige feel a thousand times worse. “Everclear.”  
  
He was right. “Everclear was banned three years ago,” Jun says, but Nino has already slipped into the crowd toward the makeshift bar.  
  
Jun is about to run after him when Shige pops his head out from behind the equipment. “Matsumoto-kun,” Shige whispers, “I don’t want to be here.”  
  
“Look, Kato,” Jun says. “I can’t save you.”  
  
Shige’s throat quivers as he swallows. He looks as if he’s about two seconds from throwing up all over the entranceway and he hasn’t even had a shot yet. The party hasn’t even _started_. Jun prides himself on being able to deal with a lot of things gracefully, but if Shige is going to hurl all over the entranceway Jun will lose his mind.  
  
“You look sick,” he continues, and puts a hand on Shige’s shoulder. “Go lie down.”  
  
Shige looks up. If he had a tail, it would probably be wagging. “Really?”  
  
“Not in my room,” Jun warns. “Nino has a spare in the basement—.”  
  
“I will do all your calc homework for two weeks,” Shige cuts in, and scampers off.  
  
Well, Jun thinks as he stands next to a stack of DJ equipment, he didn’t expect that the night would turn out to be so great that someone would offer to do his calc homework for an entire fourteen days, but there you have it.  
  
Everything else goes just as well. When the house is packed and people start spilling onto the back porch, Jun decides he can take a break from patrol and have a drink. Instead of indulging in eight cheap-ass vodka shots, Jun finds the Kahlua and a bottle of chocolate syrup and makes himself an Orgasmo. After two of those, he finds a freshman to make him another one. “You’ll thank me for this when you’re older,” he says, and lets the kid have a sip before he walks off with his third drink of the night.  
  
He stands in the corner of the living room for a bit just to see who showed. There’s Kame in the corner, the quiet boy with the wavy hair whom Nino likes to call The Unsuspecting Gay. A bunch of guys from the comedy club are here, and even if Jun doesn’t really think their gags are all that funny, he guesses that the shrieks of laughter coming from the group mean Yoko and Yasu are actually doing well. And then there are the hordes of underclassmen Nino warned Jun about, but he doesn’t know any of them.  
  
Across the room he sees Becky standing alone, her nose buried in her drink. She probably showed up with Riisa and the rest of her sorority, but Jun can’t see any of them near her, and so he starts in her direction.  
  
This is when he bumps into Yamada Yuu.  
  
“Oh!” she says. She jumps back, and Jun can tell right away that she is pretty, very pretty—it’s not just the make-up. But he still wants to pour his chocolate alcohol all over her head. “Sorry about that.”  
  
“No problem,” Jun says. He tries to look her in the eye, but she’s squinting past him and standing on her toes. “Are you looking for Shun?”  
  
“Um,” Yuu says, and scratches her nose. “No. For someone else. Do you know—?”  
  
“Matsujun! Yuu-chan!”  
  
Jun can feel Aiba’s bounding-puppy steps on the floor before he even sees him. Not that it matters much—he’s too busy trying to process that Aiba is here and that Yuu seems to have a crush on him, or something like that.  
  
“Hi Matsujun,” Aiba says, and smiles beautifully over the rim of his beer bottle. “I thought I’d come out and see what your frat is all about. It’s been fun! You guys are great!”  
  
“Thanks,” Jun says absently. He follows Aiba’s gaze and lands on Yuu, who looks like she wants to say everything and has nothing to say all at once. Despite wanting to punch her in the face, Jun feels for her—he understands what it’s like to look at Aiba and lose your words. “Aiba, you know…?”  
  
“Hm?” Aiba glances up. “Oh, Yuu-chan? Yeah, she’s pre-med, we took some classes together.”  
  
“I see,” Jun says. “Well, I’ll just—,” he begins, and starts to move away.  
  
“Oh,” Aiba says. He grabs Jun by the elbow. “Hold on. Did you fulfill our pinky promise?”  
  
Jun tries very hard not to look at Yuu. “Not yet,” he confesses, and then immediately regrets telling the truth when he sees Aiba’s face. “I’ll do it now,” he says quickly. “Right now.”  
  
“The late bird catches no worms, Matsujun,” Aiba says solemnly, but brightens when Yuu laughs.  
  
“I’ve caught a bunch of worms,” Jun mutters indignantly under his breath as he weaves in and out of the crowd. Trust Aiba to call Shun a worm and expect Jun to know exactly who he’s talking about.  
  
Jun finally finds Shun standing too close to the keg, and he realizes too soon that this is exactly how they first met. He feels a little stupid, coming back to this moment after so many things have happened in their lives. But then again, he thinks, that’s probably the point to college.  
  
“Hi,” Jun says, and then can’t remember how to form words. “Um—I have to tell you something.”  
  
“Drink this first,” Shun replies, handing his red cup to Jun. He takes a sip: it’s just water. “You’re still kind of hoarse.”  
  
“Oh.” Jun rubs the back of his neck. “Thanks.”  
  
“So what did you want to tell me?”  
  
“Sho,” Jun blurts out, and Shun raises his eyebrows. He’s probably never heard Jun address Sho by his first name, much less without an honorific. “I’ve been seeing him. For the past month. And then we had a clean break-up but I got sad so I drank too much, and….” Jun squeezes his eyes shut. What happened? He just remembers a _lot_ of limbs. And Nishikido. “Shit.”  
  
Sometimes Jun is more emotional than he likes to let on. Sometimes he gets like this and feels cold in a room with too many people just because he’s put too much of himself out there. It has taken Jun a long time to get used to himself.  
  
But Shun doesn’t seem to be bothered. “So,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Jun says. It might not be the correct answer, but it’s the truth. “But I wish I did.”  
  
Shun seems to find that acceptable. “Okay,” he says. “Just promise me one thing.”  
  
Jun nods.  
  
“When people ask how we got together,” Shun continues, very seriously, “you have to tell them I seduced you.”  
  
“But you didn’t.” Jun is genuinely confused. “I would never fall for the crooked-finger trick.”  
  
“Well now you do,” Shun says, and crooks one of his fingers in Jun’s belt loop.  
  
\--  
  
The next day, Jun wakes up to his slippers in their correct place and a clean bathroom mirror.  
  
“You’re a dirty blanket stealer,” Shun mumbles grumpily, and pulls a pillow over his head.  
  
It’s going to be a good day.


End file.
